3 Reasons B2B Marketers Must Embrace Mobile… Now

We’re all familiar with recent statistics that illustrate the growth of mobile device usage. Over the last few years, we’ve seen internet usage on mobile devices grow to exceed PC. In 2015, Google announced that mobile searches now exceed desktop searches on their search engine. And it’s estimated that nearly 75 percent of the US population now owns a smartphone.

Mobile is clearly a critical element of any successful marketing strategy. But what does increasing mobile usage mean specifically for B2B marketers? Why are so many B2B companies slow to adopt mobile marketing strategies, and how will this ultimately impact their business success?

Here are three critical reasons B2B marketers need to embrace mobile… now.

1. Mobile Impacts Fundamental Marketing Metrics

Mobilegeddon might not have been the digital marketing calamity many were expecting, but B2B marketers must realize that there are significant and fundamental risks associated with not having a mobile-friendly website.

According to CWS, businesses that do not provide a solid mobile experience encounter the following:

• A drop in organic ranking.
• A loss in mobile site traffic.
• An increase in bounce rate.

I believe that many B2B marketers remain unaware that providing a less-than-optimal mobile experience is jeopardizing fundamental online marketing success metrics such as visibility and website traffic.

2. Mobile Is Required For Customer Engagement

In addition to ensuring brand visibility and driving traffic, mobile-friendly websites increase customer loyalty, sentiment and engagement. Here’s a sampling of facts from a Google study entitled What Users Want Most From Mobile Sites Today.

• 74 percent say they are likely to return to a company’s site in the future, if it is a mobile-friendly site.
• 48 percent feel frustrated and annoyed if a company doesn’t have a mobile-friendly site.
• 52 percent are less likely to engage with a company that has no mobile website.

These are fairly dramatic statistics. B2B marketers can’t afford to annoy prospects and certainly shouldn’t erect barriers to engagement.

A positive mobile experience is now absolutely required to successfully interact with prospects in order to drive engagement, leads and sales.

3. B2B Decision Makers Are Increasingly Using Mobile Devices

We know that business buyers rely on the internet during their research and selection process. But did you know that more and more of these decision-makers are using mobile devices? In fact, B2B mobile usage is intensifying throughout the entire buy cycle.

Google partnered with Millward Brown Digital to survey 3,000 B2B decision makers about their research and purchase habits. According to the study:

• 42 percent of researchers use a mobile device during their B2B purchasing process.
• Search activity for those using a smartphone has intensified. Google is reporting a 3X growth in mobile queries.
• B2B researchers are not just using mobile devices when they are out of the office; 49 percent of B2B researchers who use their mobile devices for research do so while at work.

It isn’t just consumer mobile usage that is growing. These days, B2B marketers, you must understand that your customers, your prospects and your buyers are using mobile devices more frequently than ever, at the office and outside of work hours, to make critical business decisions.

Get Started: Mobile-Friendly Website Tips

So how should you determine the effectiveness of your company’s current mobile experience? I recommend taking these two very simple “get started” steps:

1. Assess and improve your Mobile PageSpeed.
2. Understand and implement Mobile Design Best Practices.

Along with your PageSpeed Score, Google provides specific recommendations on what you should fix to improve the mobile experience. For example, in order to improve page load speed, you may need to enable compression, leverage browser caching, minify CSS, optimize images and avoid landing page redirects.

In terms of implementing mobile design best practices, you may need to improve things by using more legible font sizes, simplifying navigation, configuring the viewport and avoiding plugins.

These two resources provide a simple and effective starting point for improving the mobile experience.

Mobile, Your Competitive Advantage

Here is the bottom line for B2B marketers:

• The mobile experience is now directly impacting your fundamental online marketing success and affecting metrics such as visibility and traffic.
• Providing a favorable mobile experience is absolutely required to continually engage prospects and drive leads and sales.
• B2B decision-makers are using mobile devices across all phases of the buy cycle and throughout the day (including at work).

Take a look at your website analytics data. Even if mobile traffic isn’t a huge device segment today, it is growing and will continue to do so.

Get ahead of this curve. Start embracing our multi-screen world. Turn mobile marketing into your competitive advantage… today.

The post 3 Reasons B2B Marketers Must Embrace Mobile… Now appeared first on Search Engine Land.